By McKay Jenkins

NY: Random House 2005

Reviewed by Kenn Harper

McKay Jenkins has written a compelling book about the murder
of two Catholic priests by two Inuit (Eskimos) in the Central
Arctic in 1913, and the subsequent police investigation and the
trials of the accused.

This is not virgin territory. In 1979, R. G. Moyles published
British Law and Arctic Men: The Celebrated 1917 Murder
Trials of Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, First Inuit Tried Under White
Man's Law. But Jenkins has written a more detailed book
than Moyles' spare account  he has put meat on Moyles'
skeletal narrative, which dealt mostly with the trials. In
particular Jenkins provides detailed background on the lives of
the two priests, the context of life in the lower Mackenzie River
area and the largely unknown land to its west, and the police
investigation.

The facts of the case are simple enough, the interpretation of
those facts more difficult as, indeed, is shown by two different
verdicts brought against the accused by two juries in
neighbouring cities a week apart.

***

In the western Canadian Arctic, regular Royal Northwest
Mounted Police patrols began early in the twentieth century after
American whalers had established at Herschel Island, west of the
mouth of the Mackenzie River. Eventually a detachment was opened
there.

In the summer of 1913 two missionaries, Father Jean-Baptiste
Rouvière, an Oblate who had served four years among the Dogrib
and Hareskin Indians at Fort Good Hope, and Father Guillaume
LeRoux, a man described as highly educated, a gentleman and a
philosopher but given to frequent expression of hot temper, left
the Roman Catholic mission at Fort Norman on the Mackenzie River
to go northeast to proselytize among the Inuit of the Arctic
coast, the people whom the explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson had
popularized as the Blonde Eskimos. (Diamond Jenness
later corrected Stefansson's faulty record and described them as
the Copper Eskimos.) When the priests were never heard from
again, and reports began to reach Fort Norman that Inuit had been
seen wearing priest's cassocks, it was feared that the two men
had been murdered. Catholic authorities requested that the police
investigate. In June of 1915 Inspector Charles Deering
("Denny") LaNauze, set out to do so. He was accompanied
by two constables and an Inuit interpreter, Ilavinik, who was
made a special constable for the investigation.

In fact, the two priests had been murdered in November of
1913, only a few months after leaving Fort Norman. An elder of
the Copper Inuit, Koeha, described the events for Denny LaNauze,
and Jenkins recounts them at length in his book. Other Inuit
recounted their version of the events to LaNauze with
considerable hesitation. They were afraid. because John Hornby,
another white man who had traveled through their land, had once
told them that if they killed a white man, white men would return
and kill them all.

In the spring of 1916, LaNauze finally arrested the two
suspects, Sinnisiak and Uluksuk, without resistance, at
Coronation Gulf. Sinnisiak voluntarily gave a statement. The two
Inuit had followed the priests as they headed from Coronation
Gulf back inland to their winter camp. Eventually they caught up
with them and travelled with them for some distance. Ilagoak (the
Inuit name for LeRoux, the volatile priest) was carrying a rifle
and the Inuit thought he was angry with them and became convinced
that he was going to kill them. When Uluksuk and Sinnisiak tried
to talk with each other, LeRoux objected and put his hand over
Sinnisiak's mouth. The priest was pushing Sinnisiak and the man
became frightened. Both Inuit wanted to abandon the priests and
turn back but LeRoux would not hear of it. After another
altercation between the priest and Sinnisiak, involving more
pushing and shoving by the priest, Sinnisiak acted. He stabbed
LeRoux, but Uluksuk completed the killing. Kuleavik (Rouvière)
ran, whether to get a gun or simply to flee the Inuit were not
certain, but he had handed LeRoux a rifle earlier, which caused
the Inuit to mistrust him despite his previous gentle nature.
Sinnisiak shot him from behind. Uluksuk stabbed him in the side
and Sinnisiak finished the job with an axe. Then the Inuit each
ate a piece of LeRoux's liver. It was apparent that the Inuit had
killed the priests because they feared for their own lives.

The trial began on August 14, 1917 in Edmonton. But the crown
had a surprise in store for the defence. They tried only
Sinnisiak, and only for the murder of Father Rouvière. It was a
trial by a jury of six. The loquacious Charles Cursolles McCaul,
crown counsel, made it clear in his lengthy introduction that
this was no ordinary murder trial, but one intended to extend the
reach of Canadian law to the remotest part of the country. But he
spoiled his otherwise brilliant address when it became clear that
his real purpose was to make the Arctic safe for white men, who
would come to explore and exploit the region's resources:

"You, gentlemen, can understand how important this is:
white men travel through the barren lands; white men live on the
shores of Bear Lake; white men go to the shores of the Arctic
Ocean; and if we are to believe the reports of the copper
deposits near the mouth of the Coppermine River, many white men
more may go to investigate and to work the mines. The Eskimo must
be made to understand that the lives of others are sacred, and
that they are not justified in killing on account of any mere
trifle that may ruffle or annoy them."

Sinnisiak, uncomprehending and dressed in skin clothing, as
befitted a show trial, fell asleep during McCaul's lengthy
address, as did Uluksuk. Bizarrely, a tub of ice water had been
placed near him, so that he could dip his feet in whenever he
needed to cool off.

The defence argued for acquittal on the grounds that the Inuk
knew nothing of the white man's law and should not be judged by
it, and that he had acted in self-defence, thinking he was about
to be killed by the priest. Chief Justice Harvey in his charge to
the jury argued against acquittal. But the unexpected happened.
The jury deliberated for little more than an hour, and came back
with a verdict of not guilty. Sinnisiak, confused, blurted out,
It is not true. I did kill him. The trial had lasted
four days.

The crown counsel and the judge were outraged. They felt the
jury had been influenced by a sympathetic local press and by
public sentiment. McCaul even suggested that some jurors held an
anti-Catholic bias and were reluctant to find guilty the killer
of a priest.

But the crown had an ace to play. Sinnisiak had been charged
and acquitted only of the murder of Father Rouvière. McCaul
filed charges of murder against both Sinnisiak and Uluksuk
jointly for the murder of LeRoux. He also applied before the same
judge for a change of venue because he claimed there was
prejudice in Edmonton against the prosecution. The judge agreed.
The trial would commence on August 22 in Calgary.

The argument this time boiled down to a question of whether
the justice system should be used as a tool of government policy.
McCaul insisted that the Inuit should be convicted but the
mandatory death sentence be commuted and they be sent back to
live among their own people as an example of the mercy of the
British justice system, and to spread some of the new ideas they
had learned while in civilization. This time the
prosecution got what it wanted. The jury was out for only
forty-six minutes and returned with a verdict finding both men
guilty of murder, but with a strong recommendation for clemency.

Judge Harvey passed sentence several days later in Edmonton.
The law allowed no sentence other than the death penalty for
murder. Accordingly, the judge sentenced them both to death by
hanging on October 15. He explained, through the 17-year-old
half-Inuit interpreter, Patsy Klengenberg, that the Minister
"authorizes me to state the sentence will be commuted."

The death sentences of Sinnisiak and Uluksuk were commuted to
life imprisonment at the police detachment in Fort Resolution.
They were not confined, but did odd jobs around the post. The
police report for 1919 described them as model prisoners. In May
of that year, they were released from custody. Eventually they
returned to their homes, well-off in material goods but,
according to the police, arrogant. Uluksuk, in fact, became
troublesome, bullied other natives and was said to be a thief. In
1924 he was killed by another native, Ikayena. Sinnisiak died in
1930.

***

Jenkins' book is detailed, fast-paced and, in its essential
details, accurate. Although he follows the story of Sinnisiak and
Uluksuk with a brief discussion of the direction that policing
and justice took in the Arctic after this case, it is a shame
that he does not more carefully prepare the reader with at least
some reference to the earlier murders of the adventurers Radford
and Street. Stylistically this may have been difficult 
those murders happened earlier, in 1911, but the protracted
investigation lasted longer, only ending in 1917, and then
without a trial. But the reader should have known that the wheels
of justice had been set in motion against Inuit accused before
this case.

At first I was put off by the appropriation of the term
Bloody Falls in the title of this book. Bloody Falls
has been forever associated with the Chipewyan massacre of Inuit
there in July 1771, as witnessed and described by Samuel Hearne.
But in fact, the title becomes appropriate as Jenkins builds his
story.

I find Jenkins habit of notation annoying. Very often, a
superscript number appears at the end of a paragraph not
containing a quotation, directing us to the chapter notes at the
back of the book, as if we needed a source for every sequential
event in the story. But too often a direct quotation is
accompanied by no reference at all.

The use of the term Barren Lands to describe the
area between Great Bear Lake and Coronation Gulf is not
consistent with my understanding of how the term Barren
Lands is used today. For me, and I would suggest for most
today, the Barren Lands is the broad sweep of tundra between the
tree line and Hudson Bay and the Arctic Coast.. However, since
the policeman, LaNauze, describes the area of his overland
travels in investigating the case as the barrens and
the Barren Lands, I assume that the term must have
been more widely applied almost a century ago.

In commenting that Europeans described the Inuit as
nomads, Jenkins counters that the Eskimos had
been in the same place for at least five thousand years.
This shows a lack of understanding of Inuit migration. Without
quibbling over the number of years, it is quite safe to say that
the Inuit encountered by most explorers and missionaries were not
the direct descendants of Inuit or their precursors who had been
there thousands of years earlier. Inuit were nomadic.

Some of Jenkins' turns of phrase are beautiful in their
simplicity. (Since every river has myriad branches leading
into it, explorers moving upstream have exactly as many ways of
getting lost as there are creeks. Minus one.) (They
did have a rifle, but a rifle with no hunting skills is a walking
stick.) (Rumors about the priests swirled around the
Arctic like a winter wind.) Other sentences are mystifying
in their confusion. What is one to make of a sentence like this:
Shouldering a canoe, perhaps with a bag or two of gear
occupying hands that would otherwise be engaged in swatting
clouds of blackflies, offers challenges to a paddler's patience
that are far less happily engaged than, say, a good set of
rapids.?

Many of his quotations are well-chosen. Imagine the sheer
desperation that young Father Rouvière felt in writing these
words: We have arrived at the mouth of the Copper River.
Some families have already left. Disillusioned with the Eskimos.
We are threatened with starvation; also we don't know what to
do. And his speculations are apt when he delves into the
same young man's inner thoughts: How could Christian
doctrine, its parables sprouted from a world that was both warm
and agricultural, ever have a practical relevance to people who
lived where nothing edible grew?

Jenkins places great reliance on a four-part article that
Denny LaNauze wrote in 1937. The quotations he extracts from this
piece are a type of prose rarely found in a police report and
show LaNauze to have been a very sensitive officer. In describing
his interpreter, Ilavinik, LaNauze wrote, We are now fast
friends. Eskimo cannot be treated on the footing of master and
servant. In commenting on the Inuit stories of the killing
of the two priests, he writes, Amongst these people, what
one knows is known by all. Or consider this, on the end of
a September day: The setting sun turned the brown of the
barrens into a royal purple, and before darkness the pinched face
of a great full moon rose over the hills to the East in a
turquoise sky. One wishes there were more writings from the
pen of Denny LaNauze.

It is disappointing that Jenkins perpetuates the myths about
the derivation of Kabluna (qallunaaq), the word for
white man. Suffice it to say that is does not mean Long
Eyebrow (page 35). And minor errors irk. I doubt if a
whaling ship would be waiting at Fort Norman... (page 140).
It was not missionary activity that caused Inuit to leave their
sealing grounds early and devote themselves to fox trapping, but
the incursion of traders into their lands (page 259). The author
has confused Inuit and the Innu (Indians) of Labrador in a
quotation (We have to follow Innu ways...) to
illustrate Eskimo religion (page 49); in fact, the
entire quotation, from Brody, is from a section on Innu religion.
And he has Inuit stalking seals on their hands and
knees, while their dogs are simultaneously sniffing out
seal breathing holes (page 53), two activities which could not
happen at the same time, and at any rate stalking seals basking
on the spring ice is not done on hands and knees.

A bigger map of the immediate area of the killings and the
investigation would have been helpful.

Overall, this is a satisfying, informative and well-written
account of an important event in the history of the Copper Inuit.
Of all Inuit in Canada, their initial encounters with white men,
and the changes wrought on their society by those encounters,
were perhaps the most sudden. Northerners, especially Inuit,
should read this book.